ABSTRACT
The history of women’s oppression in South Africa predates the apartheid era. Gender inequality accompanied colonialism. The institutionalization of apartheid brought with it a racial division among people, and class and racial divisions among women. Apartheid created a complex of laws and customs that organized the labor force to permit a particular type of industrialization, to protect a particular category of workers (Whites), and to make it difficult for the majority of the labor force (Blacks) to organize to change its conditions; it also created a coherent cluster of values and cultural practices that reinforced solidarity among one part of the population and justified the discriminatory legislation. Apartheid linked racial discrimination with the natural order so that enforcing apartheid became a moral responsibility of citizenship. With the changing political economy and the legal, moral, and cultural context it created in South Africa, apartheid affected women’s roles.
